Unspoken
by neverbe
Summary: Another night, another motel room. Mulder and Scully reflect. Set a few months postfinale.


Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to the X-Files, or anything to do with it, for that matter.

Author's note: I was kind of iffy about posting this, but decided to anyway. I've never written XF before—well, I have, but never posted it. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

**  
Unspoken**

The first thing that hits me when I walk into our dark motel room is that this feels wrong. Normally, walking into a dark motel room wouldn't feel that weird to me, but this time it does.

'Normal' for Dana Scully and I is when I would show up at her apartment at an ungodly hour of the night and drag her off to some under-populated town in the middle of nowhere for a case. We'd find a cheap motel and book two rooms. Sometimes we'd only ever use one, though. Scully preferred spending the night wrapped in my arms rather than alone in her own cold, too-big bed.

We'd work the case the next day, but it would usually remain unsolved due to paranormal reasons. Then we'd go home and pretend that whatever happened between us, didn't happen.

As I think back, a short time before my abduction Scully and I stopped pretending. Her apartment became more of a home to me than mine ever was.

Those times were short-lived, though. We wasted so much time, and I regret that we even pretended in the first place.

Those lives are over now anyway. No more going home after work with a happy, almost carefree Scully. I don't even call her Scully anymore, and she's anything but carefree. We call eachother by our first names, and I've long since stopped caring that I'm being called Fox again. I guess it lessens the pain associated with our last names.

I walk further into the room and discover her curled up on the bed, tears rolling slowly down her face.

_This_ has become the norm now, I think bitterly.

"Dana," I say softly, and it feels wrong again. She'll always be Scully to me.

I don't think she heard me. I approach the bed and sit near her, on the edge of it. It dips under my weight.

She still doesn't acknowledge me. She usually does, and this time, I fear, is worse than the others.

"Dana," I say again, more urgently. And when that fails, "Scully."

She turns her head a bit to face me.

"Mulder..." she breathes, as if testing my name on her lips. God, it almost sounds foreign. She hasn't called me that in a long time.

She sniffs and wipes her eyes with the back of her hands and sits up, making room for me on the bed. I slide on and pull her against me, leaning us back against the scratchy motel pillows. We lay there for a while, reveling in the needed contact.

I'm afraid to speak. I'm scared that if I say the wrong thing, she'll push me away like she usually does. She rarely lets me in. The other few times I've found her like this, she'd just wipe her eyes and tell me she's fine. Then she'd leave the room, leaving me standing there, wondering, what's come between us?

The Scully I know doesn't cry. She doesn't brush me off when something is seriously wrong.

What scares me now is that this is a new Scully, and I don't know how to handle that change.

I tilt her head gently so that I can see her eyes. They're red-rimmed and puffy and watery, but they're still the same crystal blue that reminds me of the old Scully. The Scully who wasn't forced to sever all connections with her family and friends, and who still had a brilliant career.

She blinks after a moment and looks away. She's about to say something, and I listen intently.

She takes a breath and then begins. "After you escaped, Mulder, I made a decision..." She seems hesitant to continue at this point, so I think I'll just ask and get it over with.

"Did you... regret your decision?" I ask softly. Please don't say yes, Scully...

She sighs. "No, Mulder," she says quietly, avoiding my eyes and staring at the wall. "That's not what I meant. I was just thinking."

I close my eyes in relief, and then open them again. I'd turn myself in right now if Scully doesn't want to be here.

"I was thinking," she continues shakily, "about a lot of things. You, me, everyone we've left behind, everything we've lost; our jobs, our homes... Essentially, our lives. Everything that defines who we are, who we were—it's all been taken away from us. I guess I was just asking myself what we've really got left." She meets my eyes slowly—hesitantly—and I hold her tighter against me.

"We've got us," I say firmly. "We've got eachother, Scully. And we've got a son out there somewhere. I don't know about you, but I'm gonna damn well try my hardest to get him back."

Scully doesn't say anything for a while after that. I struck a chord. It's not lost on me that she's started to cry again, into my shoulder, and as I'm holding her, I don't think I've ever seen this woman so broken.

"Why did you ever stay with me?" I murmur into her hair.

She says only one word, and it's filled with so much emotion and insistence that her answer is not as vague as it should be.

"Be_cause_."

And I know what she's left unspoken. She's here with me because she _wants_ to be. Not because she feels like she has to be, not because she feels guilty.

I smile a little, and nod. Her answer is good enough for me. I kiss her forehead and move into a more comfortable position so we can sleep.

Come morning, we'll be okay again.

No more pain tonight.


End file.
